The stories science had to tell this year can't be captured with words. Graphics come in that area. Scientific American's graphics editors have helped cover a lot of interesting topics this year, from the most important data emerging around the COVID pandemic to explaining some mind-bending idea in quantum physics. A small sample of our favorites.
Two years after it was declared a global Pandemic, we published a special issue on how COVID had changed the world. The graphics team knew how to show death rates and COVID infections, but they needed to look at more than just death rates. In order to tell the story of how COVID had impacted everything from the economy to education and health in the U.S. and around the globe, we worked with three different researchers. This graphic is just one part of a larger exploration of the toll of the Pandemic.
The virus that causes the disease kept spreading as we reflected on the havoc it had already wreaked. Omicron had become the most infectious strain in the U.S. by the beginning of the 21st century. We used graphics to break down Omicron's threefold strategy, which included hiding, stabilizing and sneaking in the side door of the cells in our airway. It was less deadly because it dropped its defense.
It has been found that people in Republican-leaning U.S. counties die at higher rates than those in Democratic areas. The story of how policy choices are hurting people in the most politically conservative parts of the country was told by the data on factors such as deaths from COVID and firearms.
Data shows that Summer 2022 will be one of the coolest of all time. The science of extreme heat in a world wracked by climate change was explained by Scientific American resident weather expert. The graphics in this story show how climate and weather trends led to some of the hottest months on record and how summers are projected to play out in the future.
Maybe you need a break from the bad news. The life cycle of the parasites Schistocephalus solidus requires ingestion by a fish, a bird and a copepods to survive and reproduce. You haven't seen anything like that before.
A group of researchers in China conducted an experiment to demonstrate something called quantum pseudotelepathy, which is a mind-bending achievement for those who like to read about the latest developments in quantum physics. The framework of a Mermin-Peres magic square is used to explain how players could theoretically use the rules of quantum mechanics to communicate with each other.
We like to visualize a lot of things, but what about how things are visualized? We do that as well. The most jaw-dropping photographs of the year came from the James Webb Space Telescope, which began taking pictures of the universe in unprecedented detail earlier this year. Since July, we have been drooling over the gorgeous, twinkling images that have been translated into the data by this instrument.
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